DealBook Online

By MATTHEW SALTMARSH, SUSANNE CRAIG and AZAM AHMED

Published: March 23, 2011

NO 'BASHING' The French economy minister said it was futile to continue castigating bankers for their role in the financial crisis, arguing that attention should shift to making sure that banks returned to their core role of financing growth.

''It's time for accountability from everybody, not for bashing,'' the economy minister, Christine Lagarde, above, said at a banking conference in Paris on Tuesday. MATTHEW SALTMARSH

MOVING TO MEDIATION The brokerage firm Securities America has agreed to meet with a mediator in an effort to resolve hundreds of potentially costly arbitration claims.

On Monday, the various parties filed a notice of mediation in a Dallas federal court. Securities America, a division of Ameriprise Financial, and plaintiff lawyers are trying to deal with hundreds of millions of dollars in claims stemming from broker's
sale of two private placements, Medical Capital and Medical Capital Holdings and Provident Royalties. Both turned out to be frauds. SUSANNE CRAIG

SHEDDING A STAKE The Man Group, the world's largest publicly traded alternative asset manager, will sell its 25 percent stake in BlueCrest Capital back to the hedge fund for $633 million.

The sale, which will deliver before-tax profit of about $250 million for Man, comes just a year after Man's merger with GLG Partners, a union that created a $63 billion fund that in some respects created an overlap with BlueCrest. The sale ''allows
us to continue developing our core investment business,'' said Man's chief executive, Peter Clarke, above. AZAM AHMED

CONSIDERING A BID The buyout firm Leonard Green & Partners is weighing a possible acquisition of BJ's Wholesale Club, the company said in a securities filing on Tuesday.

BJ's announced last month that it was exploring a sale of the company and had hired Morgan Stanley to run the sale.